How Time Changes Us All
by Yuko Hakubi
Summary: A little ZackCloud fic I wrote for the livejournal community. Better summary inside.


How Time Changes us all

Author: Yuko Hakubi

Rating: K for now…it may go up to T later, if I decide that characters need to swear.

Fandom: Final Fantasy 7, Kingdom Hearts universe (post KH2)

Pairing: Zack/Cloud, mentions of past Zack/Aerith

Genre: Will be fluff, but none for now.

Warnings: None here!

Summary: Cloud had some nervous habits while he was in the ShinRa military, most notably the fact that he could never have his hands still. Zack tried to pry the reason out, but was never successful.

Author's notes: Cross-posted from livejournal to here. Written for the Zack/Cloud community, so if you don't like the pairing, don't read this! Also, this is very, very short. I'm sorry!

-…-

The delicate hands of a pianist had disappeared when Cloud had joined the ShinRa military. Everything that everyone else had been before was hidden beneath calluses and scars. All their personalities were to be washed away by battle and pain, until nothing was left but monotony. No one had known that Cloud had been an accomplished musician. Not even Zack.

"Cloud, what are you doing?" Zack asked softly, which was surprising for him.

The thing that drew people to Zack, after all, was the fact that everything he did was loud and friendly. Even that one time when he had lost his voice from shouting so much, he'd found a way to be loud. And it was the fact that he was being quiet now that snapped the private out of his reverie. His fingers had been skittering as spiders would across the ground; they wove back and forth across the tops of his legs in perfectly timed patterns. His fingers depressed invisible spots in the air, also in perfect timing with his movements.

When Zack waved his hand in front of Cloud's face, the younger man blushed bright red, shoving his hands in his pockets. "S-Sorry, Zack."

Zack snatched Cloud's helmet up when the private grabbed for it, and held it out of reach. "Don't even think about hiding away under that thing. I just asked what you were doing!"

"What? I wasn't doing anything!" Cloud said quickly, glaring.

"Uh-huh. What's with the spider hands? You got some sort of twitch or something?" Zack said, a bit sarcastically. "You can't have your helmet back until you tell me.

-…-

"Uh oh, Cloud's off in la-la land again," Yuffie sighed. "Probably dreaming about his SOLDIER boyfriend!"

Her attempt to goad a reaction out of Cloud wasn't working. And it was starting to piss her off, just a little bit.

"Yuffie, stop," Aerith said quietly. "You'll make Tifa upset if she hears you."

The two girls had been waiting for the past several minutes in one of the half-demolished buildings of Radiant Garden. Cloud was supposed to help them clear out the building so that it could be torn down completely, but obviously he was too caught up in his daydreaming.

"Well, we're not gonna get anything done with HIM, so let's go!" Yuffie said, hopping down from a box she'd been sitting on.

-…-

A couple of days later, Tron's sensors found something in a part of the castle that had been blocked off by Ansem.

"Wow." Was all that Yuffie could say, in all her hyperactivity.

It hadn't been used in a long time, Tron said, but it was carefully protected against dirt and dust. The room held a well-maintained set of life-support monitors that were connected to a fluid filled tank. Nothing inside of it, of course. There were several charts on the table next to it, all talking about Ansem's past experiments with Heartless. Leon deemed that these would go to King Mickey for safekeeping.

It was the furthest corner of the room that threw them all for a loop. More life-support systems hummed and beeped their own little song, working as they were supposed to. These, however, were attached to someone.

"Zack!" Aerith breathed, reaching out to touch the SOLDIER's pale face.

"You know him?" Leon asked, grabbing the medical chart at the end of Zack's bed.

He casually flipped through it, before deeming that it was too dark in the room to read what it said. "Aerith, stay here with him while Yuffie goes to get Cloud and Cid. We need to move him out of here."

Aerith nodded, then lightly stroked the back of her hand down Zack's cheek. "Won't he be happy to know that you're alive, hmm?"

-…-

Cloud's solemn act almost shattered when he saw that it was Zack lying unconscious in the newly discovered room. Aerith moved away from the bed, so that Cloud could get closer to his friend.

"It's really him?" Cloud asked, a bit stupidly.

"Ansem's reports say that he turned into a Heartless right before his physical heart stopped beating." Aerith said. "The darkness made the wounds heal automatically into scars, and he became a Nobody as well. Ask Leon, he knows more about it."

"He's a what?!" Cloud demanded, glaring darkly at Leon. "He doesn't look like any Nobody we've ever seen."

"Ansem returned his heart to him. He's a recovered Nobody." Leon said, hardly believing it himself. "But the report also says that he's not stable. He could lose his heart again at any minute; he's not safe."

Cloud reached tentatively for First Tsurugi, ready to shove it down the throat of anyone who tried to mess with Zack. "So you're just going to write him off, then?"

"I'm not cruel. If and when he wakes up, we'll see what happens." Leon replied, walking right back out.

End Chapter One.

Author's notes: Wow, done. I apologize that it's so short, but I have a bunch of stuff to do. This includes fic illustrations for Takefuji, like I promised.


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